DISCLAIMER: I work in a group home for adults that live with mental disabilities. Because of confidentiality, there might be some parts to this post that seem vague. My apologies in advanced. Sorry this is incredibly long winded, but I want to provide as much context as possible to see if I am overreacting or if my feelings are valid. I am happy to add more context if anyone needs more.

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I am not comfortable with one of the higher ups at work. They’ve crossed a couple of lines for me, personally, and now I don’t know what to do. This person is my area director. To paint a picture, there’s me—a treatment specialist, above me are my house managers, and then above them is the area director who oversees several houses. I hardly ever see them. They stop by the house maybe once every two months and when they do, it’s just to check in and talk to my managers.

The Investigation Issue

At the beginning of this year, an incident had been reported to the main office involving my house. This prompted an investigation. I had gotten a call to come into the office and give some statements. So I did. I was floored. Whoever had called in had made up absolutely wild accusations that just were not true. Throughout their interviews with my colleagues, they found that these accusations were in fact 100% fictitious. Except for one, which we all claimed was true and we all provided information.

It’s hard to find a way to explain the incident without going into details, so all you need to know is after the incident had occurred, one of my colleagues (we will call them D) had told everyone who worked that day that they would be reporting it. This incident had happened maybe three months prior to the interviews. In my company, when investigations occur, it is said that we “won’t even know there is an investigation” because they are very private about it and anyone who isn’t involved won’t be called in. I had not worked the shift the incident occurred, but the shift after. I was only informed it happened when D told me during my shift that they’d be reporting it. This made myself and all of my other coworkers to believe that D called the incident in, they investigated them and the people directly involved with the incident, concluded their findings, and moved on. Wrong.

What actually happened is D held onto this information as blackmail. When D wasn’t getting what they wanted from my managers, D called in,—3 months after the incident—reported it, made up several lies, then no-called no-showed a few days later. D never came back to work. This is where my area director comes in—we will call them T.

T had been present during the investigations along with another worker from the office who’s job is to conduct these sort of investigations. T’s conclusion was to hit everyone who worked the day of the incident with a written warning due to “failure to report.” Technically, not wrong. We were told by D that it happened. Even though D told us they reported it, T said they should have gotten x-many phone calls, x being the number of employees who worked that day. It just feels like a backhand to us because we all were lied to by D that they would be reporting it. And since investigations are so private, we had no inclination if one were going on or not, having us assume D did what they said they would, and it was delt with.

I am truthful when I say I did not know everyone had to report it. I (and the rest of my coworkers that day) thought that after we all talked about it, one person reports, and then we wait to see if we get called in for an interview. The confidentiality of investigations also made it a grey area for us whether we should be talking to each other about it. No one asked “did you get a call yet?” because we thought that was against the rules. Not trying to make excuses, just trying to paint an honest picture of my thought process as this was the first time I've ever had to deal with something like this. Moving on.

I was told by my managers that I did not have to sign a written warning if I didn’t agree and that I could fight it. This is what I decided to do. I felt a little used after the outcome of the investigation. I did everything to help them by answering honestly and with as much information as I could. I also wanted to explain that I didn't know we all had to report when we were told D was reporting. And in the end, all they wanted was to get as much collateral damage as possible. There are some behind the scenes drama in which my managers think T has it out for our house. My house has really good chemistry. We all work well together and we have good relationships with our residents. Apparently this is out of the ordinary compared to other houses, so my bosses suspect T believes we are all hiding something when in fact we are not. We all just do our jobs very well.

So, T shows up to the house close to a month after the investigation closed. They called one coworker to the back before calling me back. My plan was to plainly and clearly voice how me getting a failure to report feels like a low blow when I was lied to just like they were lied to by D. When I got back there, I noticed another area director was present. This area director does NOT oversee my house and was NOT present during ANY of the interviews during the investigation. Already I’m uncomfortable because how am I supposed to talk about the sensitivity of the incident when someone who isn’t supposed to be here is standing three feet from me? This felt like a blatant trap, and in fact, it was. The coworker who went in before me asked why they were getting the written warning. T said that “now is not a good time to talk about it, but you can come to my office later to chat.” All T wanted was to get signatures for their warnings without any questions or rebuttals. This is proven further when I was back there. Being uncomfortable with someone else in the room, I decided to not even talk. I was going to decline to sign then walk out. After T was done explaining to me what the warning was, I told them I “won’t be signing that” and started to walk out. T told me that I in fact HAD to sign the warning. I’m very uncomfortable because there are two people from the main office in the room telling me what I have to do while I thought my managers told me was true. Instead of arguing or pushing further, I regrettably signed the warning. I in fact had the option to decline. I was not informed by T of this option and they lied by telling me I had to sign.

T is Stalking me

A part of my job is to encourage my residents to seek community outings. We go out for rides frequently, and if everything is stable, we go into the community. Throughout my workweek, I have the opportunity to be a part of two of these outings. One on Monday and the other on Thursday. The Monday outing is usually just a ride because some of the residents who participate get overstimulated easily. If they are having a good day, we bring them somewhere, otherwise it's just a car ride, then we go home for lunch. Since we only have 4 staff on the floor at a time, we don't get breaks. Granted, if it's a good day, there is a lot of down time that could be considered a break. It's honestly not that bad and no one has an issue with it. But because we have no breaks, we will often find a good time to go pick up lunch for each other or just DoorDash some. Towards the end of my Monday outings, I will go to a deli to get some food. In and out, it maybe takes me 5 minutes tops. Sometimes we bring our residents in, sometimes we don't.

For my Thursday outings, it's a one-on-one outing with a resident I've spent the past 3 years establishing a great relationship with. When I first started working, I could only get them to go on a 15 minute car ride and they barely spoke. Now we go out for an hour and visit a lot of their favorite stores. On our way back to the house, we will stop at a store for them to browse and I will pick up a kombucha or sparkling water for myself. This is after we did everything my resident wanted to do and after they shopped for themselves.

Apparently T has seen me at the deli getting food for myself. Instead of confronting me to ask what I was doing, T has been staking out of this deli every Monday and Thursday. Not ONCE has T approached me. There had been days that I've seen T at the deli getting lunch as well. Never thought anything of it because, well, it's lunch time and I thought it was pretty normal to pick something up to eat. FOR AT LEAST 6 WEEKS this continues. How do I know? Because a couple of weeks ago my manager calls me up for a chat. They ask me if I ever used the company van for my own personal use. I say no, I've only gotten food or something to drink for myself when I am out with my residents at a store we are visiting. They then reveal to me that T saw me at the deli alone getting food and then saw me 12 other times. Like I said, I go twice a week… sometimes I only go once a week if it is too unstable to go anywhere on Mondays. So at minimum, T has waited to catch me going in a store for 6 straight weeks. Not ONCE have they thought to confront me and ask me directly what I was doing.

Not only did T bring this “issue” up with my manager, but they lied to my boss by saying I've never had a resident with me. Total fucking lie because on Thursdays I always have a resident and on Mondays it's 50/50. Thankfully my boss stuck up for me during their meeting by saying we have no breaks, so it shouldn't be an issue for staff to pick up lunch if everything is going smoothly at work that day. They told T if it is such a concern, then they should offer every employee a paid break. That really isn't an option because if there were a crisis during an employee's paid break, there could be potential safety concerns due to being understaffed in that moment. And given we have 4 employees needing to take a 30-minute lunch break, that would be two whole hours of being understaffed. Not ideal for a home that has several crises.

Thoughts

This sucks. I love this job. I love what I do, I love going to work every day to see my residents. I love their good days and I love helping them through their hard days. I love the staff we have and my managers are the best bosses I've ever had. They actually fight for us rather than roll over whenever the office wants to scold us for something minor and inconvenient. This job has inspired me to pursue a master's degree so I can move up the ladder and make this a career.

And now I go to work in constant fear that I might be doing something wrong in the eyes of T. It wasn't an issue since they never stop by the house, but now they are following me while I am out with my residents. It is such an icky feeling and I feel so utterly helpless. This is the only good paying job in my area. Other jobs require a licensee or a master's. Both of which I would like to achieve, but that is a years-long plan. I can not afford to lose my job over T's insane suspicions nor can I risk confronting them out of fear they will react irrationally.

There is someone in the office above T I could speak to about this., but I have been told they will tell me “don't worry about this, just do your job.” A coworker who has worked in other homes has told me about their old coworker who was being sexually harassed at work by a fellow employee. When they went to the office about it, they were quick to act, but they more so acted as if they were sweeping it under the rug rather than helping them. When they wanted to push things further, they were passively threatened to quit bringing it up and that it was handled. If the office is complacent in a sexual harassment case, why would they even listen to me? I am so fucking lost and afraid for my job.

TL;DR

A higher-up at the main office I work at has abused their power by lying to me on two occasions. The first was when they told me I had to sign a written warning I wanted to rebuttal when in fact, I didn't have to sign it. And the other was lying to my boss about how I was using company time for my own personal benefit. Both these lies are easily disproven and could be argued, but out of the fear of my job and how close everyone is in the main office, I am stuck with no where to go. I have no clue what to do.

EDIT: several formatting errors.